"Eh ben," said he, "in the dark you can't tell a wasp from a honey-bee
till he lights on you; and that's too far off there"--he jerked a finger
towards the French shore--"to be certain sure. But if the wasp nip, you
make him pay for it, the head and the tail--yes, I think -me. . . .
There's the Eperquerie," he added quickly, nodding in front of him.

The island of Sark lifted a green bosom above her perpendicular cliffs,
with the pride of an affluent mother among her brood. Dowered by sun and
softened by a delicate haze like an exquisite veil of modesty, this
youngest daughter of the isles clustered with her kinsfolk in the emerald
archipelago between the great seas.

The outlines of the coast grew plainer as the Hardi Biaou drew nearer and
nearer. From end to end there was no harbour upon this southern side.
There was no roadway, as it seemed no pathway at all up the overhanging
cliffs-ridges of granite and grey and green rock, belted with mist,
crowned by sun, and fretted by the milky, upcasting surf. Little
islands, like outworks before it, crouched slumberously to the sea, as a
dog lays its head in its paws and hugs the ground close, with vague,
soft-blinking eyes.

By the shore the air was white with sea-gulls flying and circling, rising
and descending, shooting up straight into the air; their bodies smooth
and long like the body of a babe in white samite, their feathering tails
spread like a fan, their wings expanding on the ambient air. In the tall
cliffs were the nests of dried seaweed, fastened to the edge of a rocky
bracket on lofty ledges, the little ones within piping to the little ones
without. Every point of rock had its sentinel gull, looking-looking out
to sea like some watchful defender of a mystic city. Piercing might be
the cries of pain or of joy from the earth, more piercing were their